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Michigan Municipal Landfill Leachate Treatment

Two-Step Reverse Osmosis (TSRO)

Client
Michigan Municipal Landfill
Year

2020

Recovered approximately 75% of the leachate as clean water

Case Study: TSRO, Landfill, Municipal

A municipal landfill leachate based in Michigan produces 50,000 GPD of leachate from their landfill. The leachate is currently processed by conventional wastewater treatment, which doesn’t meet the standard to discharge in the water bodies. They wanted to treat their process water to make clean water to comply with the regulatory permit.

Company Issue / Challenge

The company is currently providing huge surcharge for releasing the leachate stream directly in a creek.

The cost for land application is high and runoff has few nutrients, so paying to truck this material to farm fields is not efficient.

Managing the storage and hauling of leachate is a constant challenge and requires coordination of various trucks throughout the year.

Concentrating the nutrients in the leachate for storage and later land application with manure would be most efficient.

What We Delivered

1

Site Assessment

Worked with the Municipal Landfill to understand its unique challenges and brainstorm how best we could assist.
2

Pilot Testing

We collected samples of raw leachate and used our TSRO system to create clean water that can be reused or discharged directly to waterbodies.

Impact & Benefits

Our filtration system is designed to recover more than 75% of the leachate as clean water for direct discharge.

1

Clean Water Reclamation

The reclaimed water can be directly discharged into bodies of water.
PARAMETER Unit Landfill Leachate TSRO Permeate TSRO Concentrate Percent Removal by TSRO
Total Solids mg/L 17,300 2100 52,900 88%
Ammoniacal Nitrogen mg/L 1,100 86.8 1,320 92%
Organic Nitrogen mg/L 110 6.9 230 94%
Total Kjeldahl nitrogen (TKN) mg/L 1,210 93.7 1,550 92%
Phosphorus mg/L 11 n.d. 12 100%
Potassium mg/L 557 19 828 97%
Sulfur mg/L 47 n.d. 294 100%
Calcium mg/L 148 n.d. 391 100%
Magnesium mg/L 150 n.d. 359 100%
Sodium mg/L 5,660 793 16,100 86%
Iron mg/L 41.9 n.d. 50.9 100%
Manganese mg/L 0.405 n.d. 0.676 100%
Zinc mg/L 1.19 n.d. 1.38 100%
Copper mg/L 0.02 n.d. 0.29 100%
Conductivity mS/cm 31.8 5.57 71.6 na
pH S.U. 7.57 6.61 8.2 na

These data reveal that majority of total solids (88%); total nitrogen (92%) and metals were removed by the TSRO. Phosphorus concentration was below detection limit indicating that the TSRO produced very clean water.  Note that the high concentration of sodium in the TSRO concentrate is an artifact of batch concentration that leads to elevated total solids concentration. It would not be expected in the commercial, continuous system.

Liquid Pictures

Scroll the gallery to see pictures of the materials from our filtration equipment.

Are you facing a similar business challenge?

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